Old Rolls went up the road which led by the Scaur. It was shorter than the formal avenue, and less in the way of more important visitors. He was much distressed and "exercised in his mind" about the agitated appearance of his master—his torn sleeve, and clothes stained with the soil. He pondered much on the sight as he walked up the road. John was not a man given to quarrelling, but he would seem to have been engaged in some conflict or other. "A runaway horse! where would he get a runaway horse at Tinto?" Rolls said to himself; "and Tinto was a man very likely to provoke a quarrel." He hurried on, feeling that he was sure to hear all about it, and much concerned at the thought that any one belonging to himself should bring discredit on the house in this way. But whether it was an excited fancy, or if there was some echo in the air of what had passed before, it seemed to Rolls that he heard, as he proceeded onwards, the sound of voices and conflict. "Will he have been but one among many?" he said within himself. "Will they be quarrelling on?—and me an unprotected man?" he added, with a prudent thought of his own welfare. Then Rolls heard a wonderful concussion in the air—he could not tell what, and then a solemn stillness. What was the meaning of this? It could have nothing to do with John. He turned up the narrow road down which John Erskine had once driven his dogcart, and which Torrance continually rode up and down. When he came to the opening of the Scaur, and saw the daylight breaking clear from the shadow of the over-reaching boughs, Rolls stood still for a moment with consternation. Broken branches, leaves strewn about, the print of the horse's hoofs all round the open space as if he had been rearing wildly, showed marks of a recent struggle,—he thought of his master, and his heart sank. But it was some time before his fears went any further. Where had the other party to the struggle gone? Just then he thought he heard a sound, something like a moan in the depths below. A terrible fear seized the old man. He rushed to the edge of the cliff, and gazed over with distracted looks. And then he gave utterance to a cry that rang through the woods: "Wha's that lying doun there?" he cried. Something lay in a mass at the bottom of the high bank, red and rough, which descended to the water's edge—something, he could scarcely tell what, all heaped together and motionless. Rolls had opened his mouth to shout for help with the natural impulse of his horror and alarm, but another thought struck him at the moment, and kept him silent. Was it his master's doing? With a gasp of misery, he felt that it must be so; and kneeling down distracted on the edge of the Scaur, catching at the roots of the trees to support himself, he craned over to see what it was, who it was, and whether he could do anything for the sufferer, short of calling all the world to witness this terrible sight. But the one explanation Rolls gave seemed to thrill the woods. He felt a hand touch him as he bent over the edge, and nearly lost his precarious footing in his terror. "Is't you, sir, come to look at your handiwork?" he said, solemnly turning upon the person whom he supposed to be his master. But it was not his master. It was Lord Rintoul, as pale as death, and trembling. "What—what is it?" he asked, scarcely able to articulate, pointing vaguely below, but averting his eyes as from a sight he dared not look at. Divided between the desire of getting help and of sparing his master, Rolls drew back from the Scaur and returned to his habitual caution. "I canna tell you what it is, my lord," he said; "it's somebody that has fallen over the Scaur, for all that I can see. But how that came about is mair than I can tell. We maun rouse the place," said the old man, "and get help—if help will do any good."
"Help will do no good now," cried Rintoul in his excitement. "Nobody could fall from that height and live. Does he move?—look—or the horse?" His tongue, too, was parched, and clung to the roof of his mouth.
"The horse! then your lordship kens wha it is? Lord in heaven preserve us! no' Tinto himsel'?"
Rintoul's dry lips formed words two or three times before they were audible. "No one—no one but he—ever rides here."
And then the two stood for a horrible moment and looked at each other. Rintoul was entirely unmanned. He seemed to quiver from head to foot; his hat was off, his countenance without a tinge of colour. "I have never," he said, "seen—such an accident before——"
"Did ye see it?" Rolls cried anxiously; and then the young man faltered and hesitated.
"Heard it. I—meant to say—I heard the horse rearing—and then the fall——"
He looked intently at the old man with his haggard eyes as if to ask—what? Poor old Rolls was trembling too. He thought only of his young master—so kind, so blameless,—was his life to be thus associated with crime?
"We must go and get help, my lord," said Rolls, with a heavy sigh. "However it happened, that must be our duty. No doubt ye'll have to give a true account of all ye've seen and all ye've heard. But in the meantime we must cry for help, let them suffer that may."